Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò wrote:
> - no need to replicate homepage data between versions; even though forks
>   can change homepage, I would expect that to at worse split in two a
>   package, or have to be different by slot, like Java;

But also the need to replicate http://www.kde.org/ to metadata.xml of 
all KDE split ebuilds -- right now, this is set by an eclass.

> - allows proper handling of packages lacking a HOMEPAGE;

Could you elaborate a bit about how different is handling of an 
empty/uninitialized shell variable from an empty XML element?

> - less data in metadata cache;

Isn't it in the cache for some reason? Really, I'm just asking.

> - users can check the metadata much more easily by just opening the xml
>   file or interfacing to that rather than having to skim through the
>   ebuild, the xml files are probably more user readable then ebuilds
>   using multiple eclasses;

Haven't we already agreed that accessing ebuilds/... directly is broken 
by design?

> - webapps like packages.gentoo.org would be able to display basic
>   information without having to parse the ebuilds or the metadata cache.

Except for the ebuilds which still use the old format (that is 100% of 
the tree right now)

Cheers,
-jkt

-- 
cd /local/pub && more beer > /dev/mouth